Hit squads to check up on 'high risk' sunbed salons

Sunbed salons will carry "high risk" warnings after a London council vowed to combat "tanorexia".

Councillors in Barnet are sending hit squads into salons to check under-18s are not being allowed to use them. They are also raising the licence fee to £385 from £305.

The change will put sunbed salons on the same level of licence required by tattoo and piercing parlours, because of their health risk.

Matthew Offord, Barnet's community safety leader, said: "We don't want to close these places down, but we would be neglecting our public health role if we didn't take action to suitably regulate the borough's sunbed facilities."

A study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, published at the end of July, states that sunbeds are "definitively carcinogenic".

London is the only region of England that requires sunbed salons to have a licence and Barnet is the first borough to class them as "high-risk" premises.

But Chris Stylianou, owner of the Tanning Salon in High Barnet, said: "A cancer risk only relates to over-exposure. With Britain's lack of sunshine, sunbeds are a healthy way to get vitamin D."

Medical experts have warned of a skin cancer timebomb caused by "binge-tanning" which has made malignant melanoma more common than cervical cancer. The deadliest form of skin cancer has also become the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in their twenties for the first time.

Figures show by the age of 24 almost half have damaged the skin on their faces through sunbathing.

An 11-year-old girl was recently warned she has the skin of a 25-year-old after becoming addicted to sunbeds.